Utilities may use communication systems to read data from electricity, water, and/or gas meters. These communication systems and meters may be installed at customer locations and used to measure consumption and other parameters to determine a customer's monthly bill. Automated systems, such as Automated Meter Reading (AMR) and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems, exist for collecting meter data from meters that measure usage of resources, such as gas, water, and electricity. Such systems may employ various infrastructures for collecting meter data from meters. For example, some automated systems obtain data from meters using a fixed wireless network that includes, for example, a central node (e.g., a collection device) that is in communication with a number of endpoint nodes.
Other AMI or AMR systems use a mobile collection device to collect meter data. Communications can be conducted between the collection device through repeaters to meters that can be referred to as endpoint nodes. Data can be extracted from meters and networks using various communication protocols. At an endpoint node, wireless communication circuitry may be incorporated into the meters themselves. Meters may be interrogated, via wireless communication circuitry, in order to retrieve meter data from the meters. For example, walk-by or drive-by reading systems may use radio communications from a mobile collector device to interrogate meters. Current approaches to interrogating meters lack efficiency. For example, network resources are often misallocated during mobile interrogation.
Further, interrogation typically requires a meter to be powered-on so that the meter can respond to an interrogation. Often meters rely on a low power state to conserve battery power and increase battery life. Returning a device from a low power state to an active, fully powered state is often referred to as waking a device. Various techniques exist for waking a device from a sleep mode. For example, devices might have a button that, when pressed, returns the device to an active mode. Other battery powered devices are capable of being woken remotely. Existing approaches to waking up meter devices might wake-up unintended devices, resulting in unnecessary power consumption, and may be ineffective in waking an intended device.